From the Journal

My life is a listening.
His is a speaking.
My salvation is to hear and respond.
-Thomas Merton

On the ferry from Oban to Mull (June 16th)

Castles, lighthouses, rocks broken down to sand, narrow roads and tipping boats to a soundtrack of voiced accents.  Fog shrouds surround.  This place has weight with its aged mystery.  It could almost be home, be a jet from Anacortes to Shaw with all these grocery bags, but for the castle perched on the hill over there.  But any place [every place] could almost be home.  Even home is only almost there.  When everything is unknown, there are too many sights to be taken in all at once.  Camera shutter going click, clack, snap - capture these moments in your mind as well.

Sometimes I can't be a writer.  Sometimes I can't be anything.  I'm just a little girl, sitting on a street corner, waiting to be called home, offering smiles, weak beyond description.

On the North Shore beach (June 17th)

This place is beauty, whether crowned in sunlight or hidden by layers of fog, listening to the sea crash, coating each page with grains of sand.

The sea, Lord, in greens and blues

Speaks of your power that daily renews.

When I'm empty of self, a void without stance,

Your breath rushes in, with a crash on the sands.

In moments of peace, when the tide book reads full

Give us wisdom to know we won't always be whole.

And when mist rushes in to hide you from view

And we're blind to the gift of your greens and blues,
Help us remember and listen and know
That you do remain, just as tides always flow.

When you're sitting in sand, a stick works just as well as a pen.  Inked words, all of a sudden, feel a little bit useless and a little bit too permanent.  Because you will move us, and we have to be ready to change, shift, listen, and move as the waves and winds push and pull.  We not are not called to a stagnation, to let the flies alight.  Yes, a call to stillness, but stillness that leads to action.

Let me be moved: drag me in the tides of your will.  First one way, then the opposite.  Here I am.

Creator created courage combines with calculated careful caution as a quiet clumsy girl clambers [climbing] 'cross crags and cracks.  Standing, stretched and smiling, sun-kissed skin, a soaking of senses, a satiated soul, saturated in Spirit, simply savoring seconds of centeredness.

Post Dun I (June 18th)

I love this place and exploring and the sunlight on the rocks and the wind blowing so hard you feel as if you're flying while running up the last meters to the summit.  I want to be weathered [marked] by this place.

After the white strand of the monks with Sarah (June 20th)

Stranded monks in white

Rocks spell out

Jay

Oh

Why

Feet numbed by shallows

Dimly dusking pinking sky

Follow friended footsteps

Learning to love

Another place

As much as

Home.

In the common room, after the ceilidh (June 22nd)

The peace here is tangible, the way of life just lovely, the people incredibly beautiful (like Katrina and Beccy, Felicity and Aaron, Matt and Claudia).  I just want to stay here and soak up the essence of this place.  It is healing in nature; a reminder of how we are to live, how we're supposed to treat nature and people.

I feel the essence of this place, in its stillness, in its silence.  It feels ancient and wild and untouched even though so many have trod across its shores throughout the centuries.  In this place, where castles are commonsense, history is everywhere you look.

I will come back here.  It's in my blood.

This place is like therapy, she said.  Out of the city, you're away from the things that distract you.  You're forced to face up to things and actually think about them.  What's important to you is made obvious.  My heart resonates with this.  All of the fluff and unimportance is stripped away and you're left staring at your life straight on.  There's no hiding from your problems.

And that's what I needed.  Me, with my tendency to bury what I'm feeling under layer after layer of silence and organizing and absence, under, 'no really, I'm fine,' under promise and sacrifice, under selfishness and bitterness.

Here is your life: your one, wild, and precious life.  What are you going to do with it?  That's what the island asks.

On the bunk, all packed  (June 25th)

I feel as though I've written nothing, reflected not at all.  But I know I have.  Talking aloud about what has been affirmed in me though, tonight on top of Dun I... I know I've been taught things here.  It's just going to take a moment to take it all in and to reflect.  And by a moment, I mean weeks.  I'm a slow proessor.  But this place has been good to me.

Everything has been so beautiful that I don't want to forget a second.  All of these images swimming in my head - I don't know what to make of them.

He will provde.  With second drafts and streams of prose.  With understanding of person and worth as being.  With peace to sustain and love to share.  Thank you.

I'm not sure what stories to tell.  Does anyone have a prompting?  A question?  A curiousity?